1. What is DevOps? List characteristics of the DevOps software development methodology.

Track & Found, Inc. (TFI), a leading vehicle tracking and recovery company, had grown significantly over the past 10 years due to high demand for its systems. The company was aware that its entire product offering was reliant on information and communication technology capabilities, so it restructured its IT department into a “DevOps” organization to promote DevOps software development methodology. The restructure split the IT department into two teams, one for development (50 employees) and one for operations (30 employees). The IT department’s more experienced and better-qualified programmers and engineers were placed in the development team; its less-qualified emplyees and newly hired college grads were put in the operations team. Because the company was growing so quickly, the two teams had to be placed in different buildings located a considerable distance apart.
TFI executive management approached SoftTech Engineers, a reputable software engineering company with which it had had a longstanding relationship, to assist its own development team in developing a new tracking application (called “TFIApp”) to be used by vehicle response teams in conjunction with TFI’s existing tracking solution to recover stolen vehicles more quickly and accurately.
SoftTech was included in the project because it possessed development skills and knowledge that TFI did not, plus it had agile project management experience that TFI management felt could benefit the project. TFI’s development team had no such experience and expected SoftTech would provide guidance.